søndag den 5. december 2010

Getting Cataclysmic !

Cataclysm is so damn close now that it is almost unbearable, but I guess we will have to wait the remaining 30ish hours.
So are YOU ready for Cataclysm? Have you stocked up on flasks, food and pots in order to make the leveling go smoother? Have you capped yourself with Justice Points and Honor points in order to grab some fast upgrades? I have - on two characters and there is a good reason for that, and that is not me being a brainless farmbot, but my guild is currently a bit low on healers, well a bit is an understatement we got 6 healers and one trial , and while we most likely will be progressing with 7 it seems that there quite easily could arise some annoying problems. The problems could be one of the healers being abnormally slow with leveling, another could be one person being unable to raid one day and thus we would not be able to make a proper raid. You might argue that there ought to be some people with a healing off spec, and yes there is people who play hybrid classes, but there is a huge difference between being able to spec healer and then actually play healer to a degree which is satisfying.

So I offered to play my resto shaman in the beginning of this expansion until we had gotten a few more decent healers to bolster our ranks, so I've decided that I will try to cover the beginning of the expansion from a resto PoV as well as mage.

So here goes resto PoV:
I've decided that this properly is the spec that I will be using in the beginning http://wowtal.com/#k=mvVjJ27r.a8t.shaman.Rc6inp some may argue that leaving out Improved Cleansing Spirit is stupid, but unless there is a heavy dispelling fight I would prefer to have 5% more Damage Reduction while casting. A talents which I am quite thrilled about is Focused Insight. You get an "on demand" burst which from what I've seen from videos and read will become quite handy and it is another reason to try to squeeze in Shocks, not only does it help downing the boss faster (And yes I am aware that the damage output is quite small, but a little damage there and a little damage there and suddenly you can notice a little change). A debated talents is Telluric Currents and despite the fact that I like the idea of being able to throw in a few LBs there isn't any talent from my point of view which can be changed in order to be putted in there.

Glyps: It is a matter of personal preference that I've taken Riptide over Earth shield, but also due to we will be running with atleast two resto shamans, possible three, and yes Earth Shield is nice, but it can only be placed on one target where Riptide can be used on every 25man along with the pets, and with the extensive amount of damage the raid will take I would prefer that over Earth Shield. Water Shield and Earthliving is a must have as well as the major glyphs.

Stats will look different that they do today and I doubt that you will find people stacking one stat as a madman since you will have to balance your int, spirit, crit, haste and mastery (which I doubt will be worth going for except you are healing tanks or a heavy AoE fight where the raid is below 60% hp for the most of the time). And you will want to go for socket bonuses the most of the time since it just is better than stacking one stat. Personally I will gem more or less like this: Red = int, yellow = int / haste, blue = int / spirit, but that is just my personal opinion and it might be altered throughout raiding and certain fights.